The enhancement of cultural awareness in ESP context: Blended learning might be a key factor

This paper explores the correlation of cultural awareness and blended learning in which an educator in charge of a tourism class can raise students’ cultural communicative competence together with their understanding of global culture. The results of the study show that the blendedlearning method in teaching and learning ESP helps learners to be completely aware of the extensive cultural issues mentioned in the curriculum in an active and effective way.

TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM TP HỒ CHÍ MINH HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION JOURNAL OF SCIENCE Tập 16, Số 11 (2019): 767-774  ISSN: 1859-3100  Vol 16, No 11 (2019): 767-774 Website: http://journal.hcmue.edu.vn Research Article* THE ENHANCEMENT OF CULTURAL AWARENESS IN ESP CONTEXT: BLENDED LEARNING MIGHT BE A KEY FACTOR Le Dinh Tung Ho Chi Minh City University of Education Corresponding author: Le Dinh Tung – Email: tungld@hcmue.edu.vn Received: August 03, 2019; Revised: September 10, 2019; Accepted: October 30, 2019 ABSTRACT This paper explores the correlation of cultural awareness and blended learning in which an educator in charge of a tourism class can raise students’ cultural communicative competence together with their understanding of global culture The results of the study show that the blendedlearning method in teaching and learning ESP helps learners to be completely aware of the extensive cultural issues mentioned in the curriculum in an active and effective way with traditional classroom teaching methods Thanks to this, learners can be more proactive in acquiring linguistic knowledge and specific cultural issues of the subject to improve communicative competence in today's global environment Keywords: blended learning; cultural awareness; ESP Introduction In the present day, as English has been an international language, studying this language is one of the goals for students to achieve in their schoolings EFL (English as a foreign language) learners have to struggle for understanding and application to practice since they encounter numerous objective and subjective difficulties However, due to the curriculum, undergraduate students in higher education have to continue their ESP (English for Specific Purposes) course – a compulsory one - in relation to their specialized areas of study to graduate It is an obvious fact that the teaching and learning English is to make students competent in language use, particularly in communication It is widely convinced that communicative competence is one of the most necessary factors to achieve success in international business in this competitive world although each skill of English is to enable learners to perform effectively at work and academic environment As an ESP course integrates linguistic skills and specific contents, learners with a high command of English can perform more effectively in their majors (Davis, 1993) Cite this article as: Le Dinh Tung (2019) The enhancement of cultural awareness in esp context: Blended learning might be a key factor Ho Chi Minh City University of Education Journal of Science, 16(11), 767-774 767 HCMUE Journal of Science Vol 16, No 11 (2019): 767-774 However, due to difficulties in ESP teaching and learning (Barjesteh & Shakeri, 2013), there has been a great shortage of teachers who are qualified enough to teach specialized contents (Hyland, 2002; Wu & Badger, 2009) together with their cooperation (Helsvig, 2012) and unsuitable course books (Sierocka, 2008; Ahmadi & Bajelani, 2012), which has greatly challenged ESP teaching and learning in the modern world Literature Review 2.1 Blended learning In non-native English-speaking countries, English is included as a compulsory subject in all grades in education but there is no authentic English-speaking environment for learners to practice (Kwon, Shih, Renandya, & Koike, 2000) The requirements of using English outside the classroom have challenged educators to encourage their learners to exposed to practical linguistic experiences to support traditional teaching and learning approaches (Parker, Heitzman, Fjerstad, Babbs, & Cohen, 1995; You, 2003) Since the arrival of CALL and the Internet, the interactions between teachers and learners or amongst students have brought significant motivations in language learning (Peterson, 2009) With the advancement in voice recognition and communication, communicative skills can be improved effectively (Mahfouz & Ihmeideh, 2009), which can promote the confidence and fluency (Abuseileek, 2007; Stewart & File, 2007) As the purpose is to create and develop such an environment close to the target language and its culture, the authentic materials, and interactive methodology are required to motivate learners to learn proficient English (Wu, Yen & Marek, 2011) Blended learning, the innovative approach, has proved itself advantageous to facilitate learners with comprehension of the usage and connotations of cultural references 2.2 Intercultural communicative competence Communicative competence is considered as the knowledge of rules of grammar and those of language used in a certain context This conceptualization of communicative competence has been furthered (Usó Juan, & Martínez Flor, 2008) since scholars have tried to categorize and simplify as grammatical, sociolinguistic, strategic, discourse and pragmatic competence which was later included and described as sociocultural rules of use Intercultural communicative competence mainly refers to “the symbolic exchange process whereby individuals from two (or more) different cultural communities negotiate shared meanings in an interactive situation” (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2005) In other words, when learners interact with others whose background and origin may significantly differ, they can comprehend the messages delivered through dialogs 2.3 The impact of cultural awareness on cross-cultural communication Cultural awareness (CA) is considered as “individuals exhibiting functional awareness of the degree to which behaviors are informed and influenced by culture” (Schram, 1994) That is, a single person needs linguistic knowledge to successfully 768 HCMUE Journal of Science Le Dinh Tung undertake intercultural communication and recognize the cultural dimension of communicative competence Defined, CA is a conscious comprehension of how culture affects language learning and communication It has been widely agreed that a systematic framework for teaching culture together with language could help learners explore the culture within the linguistic contexts Objectives of the study The purpose of this study is to examine the correlation between cultural awareness and blended learning in ESP, particularly a course for tourism The requirements of effective and appropriate interaction and communication with other cultures bring this matter to ESP teachers and learners The new approach is to enhance learners’ productivity together with integrated culture awareness within the course Methodology 4.1 Population This study was conducted in a tourism class in Vietnam This ESP course is required for junior and senior students to graduate from university There were 50 students (25 males and 25 females) allocated for the research All of them have passed the three compulsory modules, in General, English at university, and their English level is around Pre-Intermediate However, their communicative skills were inadequate for interacting with native speakers The participants were third-year students who were studying the ESP course at university They were given a survey in that their background could be clearly examined for the research The statistics indicated the appropriateness of participants to be included in the study with a high frequency of using technology, and the level of English was average at this learning stage Table The Collected data of the participants Factor Gender CEFR level Frequent usage of electronic devices Internet access Percentage Male 50% B1 36% PCs & 90% Laptops Male 80% Factors Female A1-A2 Smartphones & Tablets Female Percentage 50% 64% 60% 65% 4.2 Measurement and Data Collection Participants were given a pre-test after a lesson about niche tourism – a specific lesson in the course book that they were studying at university They were allocated randomly for the test to guarantee the reliability of the results after the test Participants were encouraged to access the online platforms which were created for further practice when they finished the class Terminologies and reading passages about the topic were 769 HCMUE Journal of Science Vol 16, No 11 (2019): 767-774 recommended so that learners could have access to these authentic materials The post-test was given in the following day when participants had to perform to show how much they absorbed the knowledge about the niche tourism and how many lexical items they could remember the lesson The ANOVA (One-way) Analysis and Critical Text Analysis were used to analyze the improvement in language learning and their cultural awareness included in the linguistic context The figure below shows how the study was conducted Thanks to the authentic materials given in the ESP course, particularly the course English for Tourism, participants with diverse backgrounds could be exposed to Through the assignments (in-class activities and online learning environment), ESP learners could share their knowledge in contexts about cultural issues and raise their intercultural communicative competence The interaction amongst students can be of great help to encourage themselves to promote their cultural awareness and language competence After the learning and testing phases, the utmost objectives could be achieved Figure The theoretical framework of the research tool authentic materials related to tourism subfields 4.3 Analytical design Participants were required to take two separate tests at two different times The results in the below table indicate how well students perform their tests The improvement score implied the betterment in language awareness and their knowledge of cultural issues as students were given the new approach 770 HCMUE Journal of Science Le Dinh Tung Table Pre-test and Post-test score Culture Quizzes Lexical items Reading comprehension Listening Writing Total Pre-test Mean 10 12 19 10 58 Post-test Mean 18 15 28 13 11 85 Total possible Improvement Mean 20 20 30 80% 25% 47% 15 15 100 30% 57% 47% The two assessments above were studied the statistics were then analyzed by ANOVA (one factor) to examine the effectiveness of the tests and this research Table Mean report of the two tests (Mean) 38.86 41.38 Pre-test Post-test (SD) 29.46 31.35 Table ANOVA analysis of the differences between the assessments Pre-test Source of VariationSS Between Groups 120460.30 df MS 17208.61 Within Groups 11775.83 200 58.88 132236.13 207 Between Groups 50482.80 7211.83 Within Groups 158240.83 200 791.20 208723.63 207 Total Post-test Total F 292.27 P-value 001 9.12 001 During the study, participants were carefully observed regarding which interest they would like to find out more in their major The frequency could be recorded through the database in the online environment The statistics in Table clearly show this concern Table Learners’ interests in tourism subfields Subfields English for travelling English for hospitality English for catering World Culture Frequency 40 32 18 45 Percentage 80% 64% 36% 90% Results and Discussions Table showed the pre-test and post-test score of the research Critical text analysis 771 HCMUE Journal of Science Vol 16, No 11 (2019): 767-774 was employed to work out the two tests and how students improved their competence In the pre-test, it could be clearly seen that learners averaged 58 of a possible (maximum) 100 points In the post-test, they could boost their average score to 85 out of a possible (maximum) 100 points with an overall improvement of nearly 47% The result also indicated that cultural awareness dramatically increased in the posttest with the improvement of 80% The blended learning helped students to increase their score with questions about culture With the means in Table increase gradually (from 38.86 to 41.38), it can be argued that there was a stable and gradual increase from the pre-test to the post-test As shown in Table 4, the result of ANOVA test show F(1)=292.27> F(2) = 9.12 and the P-values were at the 0.001 level Because the difficulty levels of the two tests were less than 0.05, the result implied that learners made a great improvement in assessments of linguistic competence The results also proved the effectiveness and usefulness of intercultural communicative competence in the blended learning The results in Table show how much-interested learners were in tourism subfield The highest percentage (90%) was the world culture, which is not a surprise since they were expected to equip themselves with a wide range of knowledge about the global culture for their studies and future career The second highest was about the linguistic awareness regarding cultural awareness; in order words, the intercultural communicative competence was learners’ concerns when they were supposed to communicate with native speakers or foreign tourists in their professions In this research, the theoretical framework was carried out through two tests and surveys to examine the correlation between the cultural awareness and blended learning in improving students’ communicative competence The individual and collaborative activities throughout the study supported learners to participate and involve more in the field The data collected and analyzed indicated that language awareness could be better achieved through the blended learning rather than the traditional methodology The culture awareness could be fostered thanks to the materials were given and the approach taken when learners were supposed to explore and obtain by themselves Learners’ autonomy was one of the potential objectives that the research wanted to aim at since the assignments set had to be completed by individuals or groups rather than teachers or instructors delivered directly through in-class lessons Further researches were conducted by students when they wanted to explore thanks to their motivation and interests rather than compulsion The blended learning was of importance in this research because it promoted the positive and active learning It also combined a variety of learning activities from different individuals effectively so that students were encouraged to become independent learners who were able to control their learning objectives, strategies, and assessments 772 HCMUE Journal of Science Le Dinh Tung Implications and further research This study proved the effectiveness of the new blended learning method to increase cultural awareness in ESP courses The appropriate use of this methodology could bring great benefits for both educators and learners The wide application in other ESP courses, such as English for literature course or English for geography in universities can bring greater achievement However, due to the limitation of the study, some of the suggestions for further research should be mentioned First, the population could be expanded with more participants from other universities rather than the single context Second, the duration of the study should be extended to observe and examine how learners’ linguistic and cultural awareness improved Third, more assessments should be employed to analyze some other factors that could influence language learning and application into practice Conclusion The research provided the above-mentioned results to indicate that learners’ linguistic and cultural awareness could be achieved and raised better through blended learning methodology The intercultural communicative competence was improved since learners were given opportunities to interact and exchange information among themselves The computer-assisted learning environment also involved students in intercultural communication in raising their language awareness Many of the subfields of tourism were offered so that students could share knowledge through learning resources such as materials, discussion or online collaboration The peer-learning played an important role in promoting learners’ autonomy and knowledge achievement The blended learning is the key factor that helps to raise culture awareness in this ESP course  Conflict of Interest: Author have no conflict of interest to declare REFERENCES AbuSeileek, A F (2007) Cooperative vs individual learning of oral skills in a CALL environment Computer Assisted Language Learning, 20(5), 493-514 Ahmadi, A., & Bajelani, M R (2012) Barriers to English for specific purposes learning among Iranian University students Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 47, 792-796 Barjesteh, H., & Shakeri, F (2013) Considering the issues of language for specific purposes at Iranian university: its genesis/problems and suggestions Indian Journal of Fundamental and Applied Life Sciences ISSN, 2231-6345 Davis, B G (1993) Motivating Students Jossey-Bass Publishers: San Francisco Helsvig, J (2012) ESP-Challenges for learners and teachers in regard to subject- specific approach Šiuolaikinio specialisto kompetencijos: teorijos ir praktikos dermė, Hyland, K (2002) Specificity revisited: how far should we go now? 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